Westerns on television

Television Westerns are a subgenre of the Western, a genre of film, fiction, drama, television programming, etc., in which stories are set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in the American Old West, Western Canada and Mexico during the period from about 1860 to the end of the so-called "Indian Wars." More recent entries in the Western genre have placed events in the modern day but still draw inspiration from the outlaw attitudes prevalent in traditional Western productions.

When television became popular in the late 1940s and 1950s, TV westerns quickly became an audience favorite. The peak year for television westerns was 1959, with 26 such shows airing during prime-time. Traditional Westerns faded in popularity in the late 1960s, while new shows fused Western elements with other types of shows, such as family drama, mystery thrillers, and crime drama. In the 1990s and 2000s, hour-long westerns and slickly packaged made-for-TV movie westerns were introduced. As well, new elements were once again added to the Western formula, such as the Western-science fiction show Firefly, created by Joss Whedon in 2002.

The peak year for television westerns was 1959, with 26 such shows airing during prime-time. In one week in March 1959, eight of the top ten shows were westerns.[3] Increasing costs of production (a horse cost up to $100 a day)[3] led to most action half hour series vanishing in the early 1960s to be replaced by hour long television shows, increasingly in color.[4] Two unusual westerns series of this era are Zorro, set in early California under Spanish rule, and the British/Australian western Whiplash set in 1850/60's Australia with four scripts by Gene Roddenberry.

The Lone Ranger was an American long-running early radio and television show created by George W. Trendle and developed by writer Fran Striker. The titular character is a masked Texas Ranger in the American Old West, who gallops about righting injustices, usually with the aid of a clever and laconic Native American companion named Tonto, and his horse Silver.

The Roy Rogers Show was a black and white American television series that ran for six seasons from December 30, 1951 to June 9, 1957 on NBC, with a total of 100 episodes. The series starred Roy Rogers, Pat Brady, and Dale Evans. The show started airing in France on March 5, 1962. The series was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1955 for Best Western or Adventure Series

Rawhide was a television western series which aired on the American network CBS from 1959 to 1966. It starred Eric Fleming and launched the career of Clint Eastwood. Its premiere episode reached the top 20 in the Nielsen ratings. Rawhide was the fourth longest-running American TV western, beaten only by nine years of The Virginian and Wagon Train, 14 years of Bonanza, and 20 years of Gunsmoke. The typical Rawhide story involved drovers who would meet people on the trail and get drawn into solving whatever problem they presented or were confronting.

Traditional Westerns began to disappear from television in the late 1960s and early 1970s as color television became ubiquitous. 1968 was the last season any new traditional Westerns debuted on television; by 1969, after pressure from parental advocacy groups who claimed Westerns were too violent for television, all three of the major networks ceased airing new Western series.[5] Demographic pressures and overall burnout from the format may have also been a factor as viewers became bored and disinterested with the glut of Westerns on the air at the time.[6] The two last traditional Westerns, Death Valley Days and Gunsmoke, ended their runs in 1975. This may have been the result of an ongoing trend toward more urban-oriented programming that occurred in the early 1970s known as the "rural purge", though only two Westerns (NBC's The Virginian and The High Chaparral) were canceled in the peak season of the purge in 1971. Bonanza ended its run in 1973.

While the traditional Westerns mostly died out in the late 1960s, more modernized Westerns, incorporating story concepts from outside the traditional genre, began appearing on television shortly thereafter. The Wild Wild West, which ran from 1965 to 1969, combined Westerns with heavy use of steampunk and an espionage-thriller format in the spirit of the recently popularized James Bond franchise. The limited-run McCloud, which premiered in 1970, was essentially a fusion of the sheriff-oriented western with the modern big-city crime drama. Hec Ramsey was a western who-dunnit mystery series. Cimarron Strip, a lavish 90-minute 1967 series starring Stuart Whitman as a U.S. Marshal, was canceled after a single season primarily because of its unprecedented expense. Nichols featured former Maverick star James Garner as a motorcycle-riding, unarmed peacemaker in a modern western setting. The low-budget sitcom Dusty's Trail was an Old West adaptation of Gilligan's Island, complete with the star of the earlier show, Bob Denver. Little House on the Prairie was set on the frontier in the time period of the western, but was essentially a family drama. Kung Fu was in the tradition of the itinerant gunfighter westerns, but the main character was a Shaolinmonk, the son of an American father and a Chinese mother, who fought only with his formidable martial art skill. The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams was a family adventure show about a gentle mountain man with an uncanny connection to wildlife who helps others who visit his wilderness refuge. Dallas took the soap opera genre and put it into a Western setting.

Little House on the Prairie was an American one-hour dramatic television program that aired on the NBC network from September 11, 1974 to March 21, 1983. During the 1982–83 television season, with the departure of Michael Landon, the series was broadcast with the new title Little House: A New Beginning. A miniseries called The Little House Years was aired in 1979.

The Young Riders premiered in the fall of 1989 and ran for 3 seasons. The show followed a group of riders for the fabled Pony Express which operated 1860–1861.

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was multi-Emmy Award winning western/dramatic television series in the United States, created by Beth Sullivan. It ran on CBS for six seasons, from January 1, 1993 to May 16, 1998.

Walker, Texas Ranger was a long-running western/crime drama series, set in the modern era, in the United States, that starred and later was produced by Chuck Norris. It ran on CBS for nine seasons, from April 21, 1993 to May 19, 2001. For most of their time on air, Dr. Quinn and Walker aired on the same Saturday night lineup.

Series with Western themes that debuted in the 2010s include Justified, about a Western-style vigilante U.S. Marshal based in modern rural Kentucky, which debuted in 2010 on FX; Hell on Wheels, about the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad across the United States, which debuted in 2011 on AMC; and Longmire, about a modern-day Wyoming sheriff, which debuted in 2012 on A&E.

With the growth of cable television and direct broadcast satellites, reruns of Westerns have become more common. Upon its launch in 1996, TV Land carried a block of Westerns on Sundays; the network still airs Bonanza and the color episodes of Gunsmoke as of 2011. Encore Westerns, part of the Encore slate of premium channels, airs blocks of Western series in the morning and in the afternoon, while the channel airs Western films the rest of the day. MeTV, a digital broadcast channel, includes Westerns in its regular schedule as well, as does the family oriented Inspiration Network.